"Windows Live Messenger - I've had no such problems."
I downloaded a new version today, seems to work better. Back in Nov when the RTM came out, the version that got downloaded from the shortcut that *shipped* with Vista was incredibly buggy, especially when closing the app.
"Nero 7.5 - Works just fine. Burns CDs, DVDs, without a hitch."
I never said I couldn't burn things without a hitch - but after Nero is installed, install Divx and move your mouse over a divx encoded file or just a straight mpeg file. You'll see what I'm talking about, it's happening to everybody with nero installed that does video editing. I think I may have just found a hack fix however:
You're lucky. I'm not alone with this problem. Google "vista firefox MEMORY_MANAGEMENT" and you'll see what I mean. Most people report the problem with Vista in general before RTM was released, but you'll find the occasional post like mine with RTM. Like I said, it's only happening on one out of my two boxes with identical hardware. This is very disturbing to me - it could potentially be a hardware issue that XP never caused, but maybe Vista is just using so much memory it happens to find the back part of my RAM, who knows.
"iTunes 7.0.2 - While I do get ONE graphical glitch from iTunes, it fixes itself quickly and works fine. When you first open the program it's window is nothing but flat black. Maximize and minimize the window and it redraws it properly."
What video card do you have? This is not at all what I see, I have that Nvidia Geforce 7600GS, and once it glitches out, there is nothing you can do to fix it. Minimizing it screws up everything - when you try to click the mouse no it to maximize it, it slides over the top of the other buttons on the start menu, and you can never maximize it again. Task Manager or reboot are your only options. I'll try to take a screen shot and post back here. I've noticed it happens more times on my second monitor than on my first - I have a dual monitor set up, maybe that has something to do with it.
"Buggy installs happen. Happens on Mac, happens on Windows, and to a limited degree, Linux can get it too, as I've learned with Gentoo."
I disagree strongly here. I freshly formatted two systems to install this. No upgrades. There should be no bugs here, I followed the same process with both.
I've been running Vista since the RTM was released. I'm running Vista Ultimate x86. I have a dual core AMD Athlon system on an Nforce4 motherboard with 2 gigs of RAM. I'm not interested in trying betas or release clients at this point in my life, I've got more important things to do with my time. So when the RTM came out, I decided to use it on my primary workstation in a dual boot environment. I have nothing good to say about Vista actually - and lots negative. I use my workstation for the following things:
1) Email, web surfing, word processing - all the basics. 2) Video editing with tools like Adobe After Effects, VirtualDub, DivX, etc. 3) Web development - I have a version of ColdFusion dev installed, which is supposed to work with IIS. 4) Database development - SQL Server 2005. 5) Local network administration for the windows network here in the office - Active Directory, Exchange management, etc. 6) Linux server management, I only need an SSH client here. 7) Backup DVDs to either my iPod or for backups for our car.
While I may not be the prototypical end user, I think most of the stuff I do would be common and stuff that Microsoft would make sure was ready - ESPECIALLY their own tools. Here is a list of the tools that don't work are aren't stable on Vista:
1) Exchange 2003 System Manager, won't even install. It uses IIS6 for some stupid reason, and IIS7 (despite what it says) is not backwards compatible.
2) Active Directory - as a result of no Exchange tools, you don't get the exchange based tabs to administer basic email properties of user accounts. M$'s solution is to RDP to a server. Nice.
3) Windows Live Messenger - crashes all the time, mostly when you go to exit the program. It's annoying as hell.
4) SQL Server 2005 - You get a warning when it installs about how it won't work, but I did it anyway. It's mostly functional, but you still have the occasional system freeze, etc. Good times.
5) Since none of my 3rd party DVD making apps seem to want to work with vista, I tried Windows Movie Maker. After opening a raw avi movie file straight from my video camera, movie maker decided it didn't want to work. It just hung and after a failed attempt to kill it with task manager, I had to reboot. I tried again with exactly the same results. WTF?
And those are just the Microsoft products that don't work, which seems completely idiotic to me. You would think with an OS in development for 5 years, you'd iron some of that shit out with your own software. Now for the 3rd party apps:
1) Nero - I use it for CD and DVD burning like everybody else. For whatever reason, everytime I move my mouse over an mpeg or avi file in windows I get a RunDLL32 stop error and windows freaks out. This only happens after installing Nero. I'm running the latest verison as well, straight from Nero.com as of yesterday. If you do anything with videos, windows throws up these errors. Makes video editing impossible.
2) iTunes 7.0.2 - basically, nothing about iTunes works for more than 5 minutes. You can't burn cds, so that's bad. Then if you leave it open for 5 minutes, eventually the user interface freaks out and starts blinking in parts and removes the colors, etc. Then if you minimize it, you'll never get it back without restarting or manually killing it with task manager.
3) Firefox - about one out of every 10 times I open up Firefox, I get the blue screen of death with a MEMORY_MANAGEMENT error. This only happens on one of the workstations I put Vista on, the other doesn't have this same issue despite the fact that it's the same hardware exactly. Very strange.
4) Nvidia drivers - using the latest nvidia drivers from their website as of yesterday, my machine becomes completely unstable. Windows Explorer crashes every so often. I had to roll back to the default microsoft drivers for my Geforce 7600GS.
Now if all that isn't bad enough and reason to stay away, here are my gripes about the OS itself:
Yes, the Xbox 360 has been updated in this fashion already for the kernel from what I understand. Just look at the people already trying to figure out how to downgrade their kernels and also prevent kernels from being updated via new games. It's already a problem.
You're right. But from what I understand you don't have to for an update - the movies themselves now include them I think. I think the Xbox 360 works the same way with games updating the system. Very sneaky.
Vista has been in development for 5 years and had one of the longest beta cycles for any MS operating system ever. There is absolutely no excuse for them at this point not to have Vista work with their existing production-based administrative tools. So yes, this is HUGE that the supposed king of software development can't make it's own very popular and widely used applications work on it's new operating system. It's very, very sad and unthinkable that they don't have multiple departments working together to avoid this. I would fully expect that third party applications have a rough go for the first few months on a new OS, but I am horrified that Microsoft's own apps don't and won't run anytime soon. SQL is supposed to be fixed soon, however it's rumored that Exchange System manager will never work on Vista, atleast until Exchange 2007 ships and you're forced to upgrade for this as one reason. Vista is publicly available now to OEMs and MSDN subscribers. They have no excuse at this point.
You're dead wrong. There are two very important Microsoft Apps not working on Vista yet, this is one of them. Why is it important? I have a development box running on Vista now which works fine, except for the fact that SQL Management Studio is buggy as hell and makes it impossible to connect to my SQL installs to manage and alter them. The other massive app not working is the Exchange System Manager for Exchange 2003. It stupidly requires IIS 6, which Vista doesn't have and the backwards compatibility from IIS 7 is basically non-existent. This is a HUGE problem for IT staff and developers trying to get a start on using Vista so they can train others, while at the same time continuing their development and administrative work. Microsoft screwed up big time here.
The keyword is profit. Microsoft was trying to strong arm Nvidia into lowering their chip prices below a point they wanted to. They had to battle it out in court for the original xbox hardware, so there was bad enough blood to not go forward with something similar in the 360. I'm not sure about Intel.
Actually, from the rumors I have heard, you're supposed to be able to do quite a bit in terms of development with the PS3 off the shelf. I think that was one of the more radical improvements this time around, but I could be wrong of course.
Yeah, I actually did flip it yesterday. I made $200 on the 20 gig version, which isn't huge - but still enough to either get me an Xbox 360 flat out at Microcenter now, or just apply the $200 to a PS3 in the coming weeks. I'm still deciding. It was damn hard not opening that box though...
That's exactly why I'm thinking of getting one now, the $100 rebate at Microcenter. $300 for the version with a drive sounds good - but aren't they just laptop drives, and couldn't I just get the core for $200 and spend $80 and throw a 120 gig HD in it from NewEgg?
I have always been a playstation guy myself - but I'm seriously considering getting a 360 now for a few reasons. One is that it's cheaper than the PS3. I actually got a PS3 last week but haven't opened it yet. I think I'd rather sell it and take the profits and buy a 360. I've seen games on both platforms, and they look similar enough for me to not care much graphics wise. Maybe over time the PS3 will come out on top with things like physics rendering or something, but who knows at this point. I'm more interested in game play and yes, I'd like to go online for the first time with a console. I tried with my PS2, but I didn't like it. With the 360, I'm tempted to pay $50 for the year to try. My buddy has one and always downloads game demos. This to me is awesome because it's a try before you buy type of thing, and it's probably cheaper than paying $9 to rent a game at blockbuster. I'm new to all this though and I don't actually know what exactly the subscription will get me - but for the first time in my life Micrsoft has tempted me into trying this. Now if it was only $25, I wouldn't think twice about doing it.
I didn't call all Novell engineers jerk offs - who's stirring up the pot now?? I said:
"I can see some jerk-off from Novell doing this intentially to open the flood gates for M$ litigation."
Obviously you don't understand that means one bad apple from your company could now sabotage the company you work for, and the entire Linux kernel. So, that dream job you talk about - if you want to keep it long term, you should really vocalize your distrust of this agreement with Microsoft. I have no idea how my post got modded as a troll up above - it's a very, very serious threat to Linux and a slap in the face to IBM, RedHat, and any other GPL based software provider.
Yeah, until somebody from Novell contributes something to the linux kernel - and then RedHat uses it, and M$ sues the snot out of them. I realize every decent open source developer works on the honor code - where they can't contribute code after seeing source from a closed source vendor. Think back to the NTFS in the linux kernel debacle from a few years back. I can see some jerk-off from Novell doing this intentially to open the flood gates for M$ litigation. Does anybody else think this is possible? I realize that if some tainted code was found in the kernel, it can be removed like it was with the NTFS stuff, but by then somebody could get sued.
Yeah, I thought that same thing at first. However, I don't think we are the target market. I think Laptops and OEMs will be the market for this. Just imagine a mac-mini type computer from Dell or somebody. Onboard video has been around for ages, but if the board could be smaller since the gpu is on the cpu, then you'd save space and power so the machine could be smaller and theoretically cheaper.
Unless you have an unpatched windows system with automatic updates turned off. Then you can easily get infected with worms, such as the old Code Red worm from about 5 years ago - that's just one example of a windows worm that can get your machine if it's simply on without a firewall in front of it.
Troll? Do some research on your own company.... ask around about QuarkCity in India and the set up your company is putting there, along with Dell and some others. Then again, you're probably not privy to the information required to really find out where people are being hired etc. You just keep telling yourself that buying Microsoft some how benefits the U.S..... While your statement about people being the U.S. primarily right now may or may not be correct, there is no guarantee this will be true in the next few years.
Are you kidding me? There isn't anything left in this country that is truly made in the USA. Where do you think Microsoft employs these whiz bang engineers and programmers who write the code and design the hardware. Hint: It's not in the U.S. The only people profiting in the U.S. from buying Microsoft are the executives like Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates.
I agree with the upper poster there and I'm not fanboi of any company. I don't like Microsoft, but Sony hasn't been impressing me either. I'd love to go get a Nintendo, but graphically, the Xbox 360 and the PS3 are doing to kill that Wii thing. I don't use consoles for movie players, so I could care less about the blu ray or the HDDVD aspect of things. That's why I'm actually leaning more towards an Xbox 360, but it's Microsoft and I hate them. I already own:
NES Super Nintendo Playstation Playstation 2 Xbox
So, once one of the two major competitors, ie Sony or M$, come down in price, I'll consider buying one. But more than likely it will be the PS3 since I'm guessing again that it will have a wider game selection and again, I won't be helping Microsoft.
Yeah, it's all subjective I guess. If you compare it to a V7 with a hard drive in it, it's pretty quiet:) But if you're wanting dead silence, then yeah, it's probably loud when it gets hot. It also depends on how much dust you have in there and if you keep your console off the carpet. Put it on an exposed wood or metal surface with plenty of air flow, and it's much better.
"The slim PS2 comes sans fan (meaning potential overheating for long-winded players)"
Wrong. If you take apart a slim PS2, you'll clearly see a fan on the inside of it. However, it's very quiet, which is a good thing. But yes, it does get warm - but the fan keeps the cpu/gpu from melting.
Yeah, I have a modded xbox and NEVER use it for games. I use it for one thing - streaming files from windows PC, files I have copied from my tivo to watch elsewhere. Why should that be illegal again? I don't have time for video games much these days, and if I did, I don't feel a 20 gig hard drive is enough space to store a bunch of backed up games.
I'm going to puke if I see somebody mention that the desktop days are coming to an end!!!! Who says? What proof, besides companies greed, shows that people don't want desktop software? I sure as hell won't be running apps online rather than on my own machine for a lot reasons. Just to name a few:
1) Bandwidth
2) Keeping apps under MY control, not somebody elses
3) I don't like being required to have an internet connection to type an f'n paper.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure San Andreas was dual layer already, and that's for the PS2 with smaller and simpler textures. So, I can see how they would need 15+ gigs at a minimum for a good sequel on the PS3.
Slashdot Mirror
"Windows Live Messenger - I've had no such problems."
e -windows-host-process-rundll32-has-stopped-working .html
I downloaded a new version today, seems to work better. Back in Nov when the RTM came out, the version that got downloaded from the shortcut that *shipped* with Vista was incredibly buggy, especially when closing the app.
"Nero 7.5 - Works just fine. Burns CDs, DVDs, without a hitch."
I never said I couldn't burn things without a hitch - but after Nero is installed, install Divx and move your mouse over a divx encoded file or just a straight mpeg file. You'll see what I'm talking about, it's happening to everybody with nero installed that does video editing. I think I may have just found a hack fix however:
http://www.hostingforum.ca/windows-vista/170502-r
"Firefox 2.0 - Works just fine."
You're lucky. I'm not alone with this problem. Google "vista firefox MEMORY_MANAGEMENT" and you'll see what I mean. Most people report the problem with Vista in general before RTM was released, but you'll find the occasional post like mine with RTM. Like I said, it's only happening on one out of my two boxes with identical hardware. This is very disturbing to me - it could potentially be a hardware issue that XP never caused, but maybe Vista is just using so much memory it happens to find the back part of my RAM, who knows.
"iTunes 7.0.2 - While I do get ONE graphical glitch from iTunes, it fixes itself quickly and works fine. When you first open the program it's window is nothing but flat black. Maximize and minimize the window and it redraws it properly."
What video card do you have? This is not at all what I see, I have that Nvidia Geforce 7600GS, and once it glitches out, there is nothing you can do to fix it. Minimizing it screws up everything - when you try to click the mouse no it to maximize it, it slides over the top of the other buttons on the start menu, and you can never maximize it again. Task Manager or reboot are your only options. I'll try to take a screen shot and post back here. I've noticed it happens more times on my second monitor than on my first - I have a dual monitor set up, maybe that has something to do with it.
"Buggy installs happen. Happens on Mac, happens on Windows, and to a limited degree, Linux can get it too, as I've learned with Gentoo."
I disagree strongly here. I freshly formatted two systems to install this. No upgrades. There should be no bugs here, I followed the same process with both.
I've been running Vista since the RTM was released. I'm running Vista Ultimate x86. I have a dual core AMD Athlon system on an Nforce4 motherboard with 2 gigs of RAM. I'm not interested in trying betas or release clients at this point in my life, I've got more important things to do with my time. So when the RTM came out, I decided to use it on my primary workstation in a dual boot environment. I have nothing good to say about Vista actually - and lots negative. I use my workstation for the following things:
1) Email, web surfing, word processing - all the basics.
2) Video editing with tools like Adobe After Effects, VirtualDub, DivX, etc.
3) Web development - I have a version of ColdFusion dev installed, which is supposed to work with IIS.
4) Database development - SQL Server 2005.
5) Local network administration for the windows network here in the office - Active Directory, Exchange management, etc.
6) Linux server management, I only need an SSH client here.
7) Backup DVDs to either my iPod or for backups for our car.
While I may not be the prototypical end user, I think most of the stuff I do would be common and stuff that Microsoft would make sure was ready - ESPECIALLY their own tools. Here is a list of the tools that don't work are aren't stable on Vista:
1) Exchange 2003 System Manager, won't even install. It uses IIS6 for some stupid reason, and IIS7 (despite what it says) is not backwards compatible.
2) Active Directory - as a result of no Exchange tools, you don't get the exchange based tabs to administer basic email properties of user accounts. M$'s solution is to RDP to a server. Nice.
3) Windows Live Messenger - crashes all the time, mostly when you go to exit the program. It's annoying as hell.
4) SQL Server 2005 - You get a warning when it installs about how it won't work, but I did it anyway. It's mostly functional, but you still have the occasional system freeze, etc. Good times.
5) Since none of my 3rd party DVD making apps seem to want to work with vista, I tried Windows Movie Maker. After opening a raw avi movie file straight from my video camera, movie maker decided it didn't want to work. It just hung and after a failed attempt to kill it with task manager, I had to reboot. I tried again with exactly the same results. WTF?
And those are just the Microsoft products that don't work, which seems completely idiotic to me. You would think with an OS in development for 5 years, you'd iron some of that shit out with your own software. Now for the 3rd party apps:
1) Nero - I use it for CD and DVD burning like everybody else. For whatever reason, everytime I move my mouse over an mpeg or avi file in windows I get a RunDLL32 stop error and windows freaks out. This only happens after installing Nero. I'm running the latest verison as well, straight from Nero.com as of yesterday. If you do anything with videos, windows throws up these errors. Makes video editing impossible.
2) iTunes 7.0.2 - basically, nothing about iTunes works for more than 5 minutes. You can't burn cds, so that's bad. Then if you leave it open for 5 minutes, eventually the user interface freaks out and starts blinking in parts and removes the colors, etc. Then if you minimize it, you'll never get it back without restarting or manually killing it with task manager.
3) Firefox - about one out of every 10 times I open up Firefox, I get the blue screen of death with a MEMORY_MANAGEMENT error. This only happens on one of the workstations I put Vista on, the other doesn't have this same issue despite the fact that it's the same hardware exactly. Very strange.
4) Nvidia drivers - using the latest nvidia drivers from their website as of yesterday, my machine becomes completely unstable. Windows Explorer crashes every so often. I had to roll back to the default microsoft drivers for my Geforce 7600GS.
Now if all that isn't bad enough and reason to stay away, here are my gripes about the OS itself:
1) It's slow as he
Yes, the Xbox 360 has been updated in this fashion already for the kernel from what I understand. Just look at the people already trying to figure out how to downgrade their kernels and also prevent kernels from being updated via new games. It's already a problem.
You're right. But from what I understand you don't have to for an update - the movies themselves now include them I think. I think the Xbox 360 works the same way with games updating the system. Very sneaky.
Vista has been in development for 5 years and had one of the longest beta cycles for any MS operating system ever. There is absolutely no excuse for them at this point not to have Vista work with their existing production-based administrative tools. So yes, this is HUGE that the supposed king of software development can't make it's own very popular and widely used applications work on it's new operating system. It's very, very sad and unthinkable that they don't have multiple departments working together to avoid this. I would fully expect that third party applications have a rough go for the first few months on a new OS, but I am horrified that Microsoft's own apps don't and won't run anytime soon. SQL is supposed to be fixed soon, however it's rumored that Exchange System manager will never work on Vista, atleast until Exchange 2007 ships and you're forced to upgrade for this as one reason. Vista is publicly available now to OEMs and MSDN subscribers. They have no excuse at this point.
You're dead wrong. There are two very important Microsoft Apps not working on Vista yet, this is one of them. Why is it important? I have a development box running on Vista now which works fine, except for the fact that SQL Management Studio is buggy as hell and makes it impossible to connect to my SQL installs to manage and alter them. The other massive app not working is the Exchange System Manager for Exchange 2003. It stupidly requires IIS 6, which Vista doesn't have and the backwards compatibility from IIS 7 is basically non-existent. This is a HUGE problem for IT staff and developers trying to get a start on using Vista so they can train others, while at the same time continuing their development and administrative work. Microsoft screwed up big time here.
The keyword is profit. Microsoft was trying to strong arm Nvidia into lowering their chip prices below a point they wanted to. They had to battle it out in court for the original xbox hardware, so there was bad enough blood to not go forward with something similar in the 360. I'm not sure about Intel.
Actually, from the rumors I have heard, you're supposed to be able to do quite a bit in terms of development with the PS3 off the shelf. I think that was one of the more radical improvements this time around, but I could be wrong of course.
Yeah, I actually did flip it yesterday. I made $200 on the 20 gig version, which isn't huge - but still enough to either get me an Xbox 360 flat out at Microcenter now, or just apply the $200 to a PS3 in the coming weeks. I'm still deciding. It was damn hard not opening that box though...
That's exactly why I'm thinking of getting one now, the $100 rebate at Microcenter. $300 for the version with a drive sounds good - but aren't they just laptop drives, and couldn't I just get the core for $200 and spend $80 and throw a 120 gig HD in it from NewEgg?
I have always been a playstation guy myself - but I'm seriously considering getting a 360 now for a few reasons. One is that it's cheaper than the PS3. I actually got a PS3 last week but haven't opened it yet. I think I'd rather sell it and take the profits and buy a 360. I've seen games on both platforms, and they look similar enough for me to not care much graphics wise. Maybe over time the PS3 will come out on top with things like physics rendering or something, but who knows at this point. I'm more interested in game play and yes, I'd like to go online for the first time with a console. I tried with my PS2, but I didn't like it. With the 360, I'm tempted to pay $50 for the year to try. My buddy has one and always downloads game demos. This to me is awesome because it's a try before you buy type of thing, and it's probably cheaper than paying $9 to rent a game at blockbuster. I'm new to all this though and I don't actually know what exactly the subscription will get me - but for the first time in my life Micrsoft has tempted me into trying this. Now if it was only $25, I wouldn't think twice about doing it.
I didn't call all Novell engineers jerk offs - who's stirring up the pot now?? I said:
"I can see some jerk-off from Novell doing this intentially to open the flood gates for M$ litigation."
Obviously you don't understand that means one bad apple from your company could now sabotage the company you work for, and the entire Linux kernel. So, that dream job you talk about - if you want to keep it long term, you should really vocalize your distrust of this agreement with Microsoft. I have no idea how my post got modded as a troll up above - it's a very, very serious threat to Linux and a slap in the face to IBM, RedHat, and any other GPL based software provider.
Yeah, until somebody from Novell contributes something to the linux kernel - and then RedHat uses it, and M$ sues the snot out of them. I realize every decent open source developer works on the honor code - where they can't contribute code after seeing source from a closed source vendor. Think back to the NTFS in the linux kernel debacle from a few years back. I can see some jerk-off from Novell doing this intentially to open the flood gates for M$ litigation. Does anybody else think this is possible? I realize that if some tainted code was found in the kernel, it can be removed like it was with the NTFS stuff, but by then somebody could get sued.
Yeah, I thought that same thing at first. However, I don't think we are the target market. I think Laptops and OEMs will be the market for this. Just imagine a mac-mini type computer from Dell or somebody. Onboard video has been around for ages, but if the board could be smaller since the gpu is on the cpu, then you'd save space and power so the machine could be smaller and theoretically cheaper.
Unless you have an unpatched windows system with automatic updates turned off. Then you can easily get infected with worms, such as the old Code Red worm from about 5 years ago - that's just one example of a windows worm that can get your machine if it's simply on without a firewall in front of it.
Troll? Do some research on your own company.... ask around about QuarkCity in India and the set up your company is putting there, along with Dell and some others. Then again, you're probably not privy to the information required to really find out where people are being hired etc. You just keep telling yourself that buying Microsoft some how benefits the U.S..... While your statement about people being the U.S. primarily right now may or may not be correct, there is no guarantee this will be true in the next few years.
Are you kidding me? There isn't anything left in this country that is truly made in the USA. Where do you think Microsoft employs these whiz bang engineers and programmers who write the code and design the hardware. Hint: It's not in the U.S. The only people profiting in the U.S. from buying Microsoft are the executives like Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates.
I agree with the upper poster there and I'm not fanboi of any company. I don't like Microsoft, but Sony hasn't been impressing me either. I'd love to go get a Nintendo, but graphically, the Xbox 360 and the PS3 are doing to kill that Wii thing. I don't use consoles for movie players, so I could care less about the blu ray or the HDDVD aspect of things. That's why I'm actually leaning more towards an Xbox 360, but it's Microsoft and I hate them. I already own:
NES
Super Nintendo
Playstation
Playstation 2
Xbox
So, once one of the two major competitors, ie Sony or M$, come down in price, I'll consider buying one. But more than likely it will be the PS3 since I'm guessing again that it will have a wider game selection and again, I won't be helping Microsoft.
Yeah, it's all subjective I guess. If you compare it to a V7 with a hard drive in it, it's pretty quiet :) But if you're wanting dead silence, then yeah, it's probably loud when it gets hot. It also depends on how much dust you have in there and if you keep your console off the carpet. Put it on an exposed wood or metal surface with plenty of air flow, and it's much better.
"The slim PS2 comes sans fan (meaning potential overheating for long-winded players)"
Wrong. If you take apart a slim PS2, you'll clearly see a fan on the inside of it. However, it's very quiet, which is a good thing. But yes, it does get warm - but the fan keeps the cpu/gpu from melting.
Well, through sites like NewEgg you can get OEM copies of windows. Granted, they are still over $100, but it beats the crap out of paying $300 retail.
Yeah, I have a modded xbox and NEVER use it for games. I use it for one thing - streaming files from windows PC, files I have copied from my tivo to watch elsewhere. Why should that be illegal again? I don't have time for video games much these days, and if I did, I don't feel a 20 gig hard drive is enough space to store a bunch of backed up games.
I'm going to puke if I see somebody mention that the desktop days are coming to an end!!!! Who says? What proof, besides companies greed, shows that people don't want desktop software? I sure as hell won't be running apps online rather than on my own machine for a lot reasons. Just to name a few:
1) Bandwidth
2) Keeping apps under MY control, not somebody elses
3) I don't like being required to have an internet connection to type an f'n paper.
And those are just to name a few.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure San Andreas was dual layer already, and that's for the PS2 with smaller and simpler textures. So, I can see how they would need 15+ gigs at a minimum for a good sequel on the PS3.
Now how can I use these with my sharks....